The 2007 season was memorable for many reasons, not the least of which was all of the new people the world of IndyCars introduced to us. Folks like Milka Duno, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Leilani Münter...Anthony Fedele.
Yes friends, without a doubt the most unlikely of celebrities this year turned out to be the guy who got involved in an altercation with an old man after the Watkins Glen race. At first he was misidentified as any number of folks by “journalists”, but when the Iron Hand of Justice correctly revealed his name it was included in the same phrase as “Hard Card Revoked Indefinitely”.
Despite SPEEDTV footage showing Sam Hornish Sr as the instigator, many fans had already made up their minds that Fedele was some sort of thug. Making matters worse was the while there were quotes afterwards from an embarrassed Sam Senior, no one bothered to talk to Fedele. Well, recently Anthony was gracious enough to share his side with My Name Is IRL, so as Paul Harvey likes to say, “...and now, the rest of the story.”
Q: So how did you come to be friends with the Andrettis?
A: I met The Andrettis through my sister who was a very close friend of Michael’s previous wife, and pretty much became friends with him from there.
Q: Several readers speculated you were at the track as “muscle”. Was that the case?
A: LOL...No I was not there for muscle by any means. I was at Michael’s quaint little wedding at Mario’s vineyard in Napa Valley and I am pretty sure I wasn’t invited there for muscle. I was there as a friend and a race fan.
Q: Judging from the sweet rides on your MySpace page your day job isn’t bouncer or event security, is it?
A: No I actually work in the Music / Entertainment business. My Stepmother is a Hall of Fame songwriter who wrote “The Greatest Love of All” and all of the Stylistics music. She passed away and we lease her released and unreleased catalog of music. I split my time between that, I also own a Bar / Lounge in Philadelphia.
Q: The burning question: What was Sam Hornish Sr screaming at Tony Kanaan that got you involved? Was he dropping F-bombs or was it the pushing or what?
A: Well I’ll put it to this way: It seemed kind of funny to me that two grown men are in an altercation with helmets on, and I actually said that to Michael as we were walking towards the two. I got involved only to diffuse the situation when this person pushed TK, not that TK needs me to defend him. Michael then starting pointing at the guy and was saying something to the sort of “Hey who are you? What’s your problem?” At this point I was like well...If Michael has no idea who this is then he could very easily be just a lunatic Hornish fan. I then stepped over to the side, when he did and started to explain to this person “look this is over just relax”. Obviously he didn’t like that idea.
Q: From the video it looks like Sam Senior grabbed you first. Did you point this out when they took your hard card “indefinitely”?
A: Mr Hornish absolutely 100% did grab me first. Not only that, if you look really close at the video I have my glasses in one hand and my cell phone in the other the whole time. I couldn’t even grab him if I wanted to. He two fisted my shirt, necklace, and hard card in one grab and started yanking and pulling me backwards. All I am saying to myself while I still have my glasses and cell phone in hand is that "I am not going to let Mr. Hornish take me down". And again on the video if you look close, he trips over a Penske guy’s leg and falls down. I still do not go down to the ground on top of him. I then am grabbed from behind and thrown on the ground STILL holding my glasses in my hand (Look close). I get up drop my glasses, look for the Penske guy and Charles takes me to the side. I did speak to Charles as well as Brian afterwards and just explained exactly what I just stated here with video to back it up. Bottom line is that I was ok with any decision they made. I just didn’t want them to think I initiated this altercation.
Q: Does the AGR team had any kind of “history” with the Hornish family? (Other than the finish of the ’06 Indy 500, of course.)
A: Not that I know of, like I said earlier Michael had no idea who Mr. Hornish was at the time of incident at Watkins Glenn. The Cheever Family maybe...
Q: Suppose you never get involved and Tony and Sam had come to blows – who wins?
A: Hmmm...I dunno those Brazilians always have some kind of new wave crazy Royce Gracie martial arts lurking somewhere, although the tale of the tape would give the height and reach advantage to Hornish. If Sam could stay in the middle of pitlane and not get caught up against the walls I think it would be interesting.
Q: The ringside, err, trackside announcers originally thought you were TJ Patrick. Does that bother you, and are you friends with the guy we call “Dadica”?
A: To be honest with you I was kind of flattered that they thought I was T.J. since he is a much better looking guy than I am. We joked about it for a while. Actually I am friends with T.J. he is a great guy and has a great family. Plus I think he understands race related feistiness as well.
Q: What was life like after the infamous footage was shown on SportsCenter about a billion times? Did you expect to hear your name so much on TV? Did any strangers recognize you?
A: Well my card was reinstated shortly after and when I was at some races I was asked to sign some pictures in the IndyCar magazine. It was the worst possible picture of me. I was on the ground not looking so good. But that was all done out of fun. People at my bar all saw it on ESPN and I had to tell the story a few hundred times when I returned there. One race fan in Detroit came up to me totally out of the blue wanted to shake my hand and said he supported that I would stick up for my friends. But mostly I was bashed left and right on the internet for attacking this elder gentleman for no reason. One person even said it was because Sam beat Marco at the Indy 500...that’s awesome.
Q: Totally unrelated, but since you’re close to Marco maybe you can answer this – what’s the deal with Alfonso Ribiero always being around?
A: Yeah I don’t know, it seems that Alfonso has a GPS device on Marco when he arrives in the LA area. I never got to hang out with him and I’m sure he is a nice guy but the TMZ “I’m Chillin...He’s Chillin...” incident kind of threw me off.
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add about the incident, the Andrettis, or life in general?
A: Now that it’s all over and no one got seriously injured I think it’s funny the things people on your site and others conjure up. Let’s see I was T.J. Patrick, and then I was TK’s cousin from Brazil, his manager, Jaime Camara. Then I was Michael’s security, then I became a myth like Keyser Soze and everyone wanted to know why the IRL and AGR wouldn’t disclose who I was. Then I became a part of Michael’s entourage and I was referred to as Turtle. That is hilarious.
(Ed. Note: Uh, that would be me came up with that last one.)
Then people said on here that Michael and I look eerie on his Jet. Someone please explain to me what that means? This is the first time I explained what happened and to be honest I was only concerned with what Michael and the people close to me at AGR thought. If it wasn’t for the SPEEDVISION angles I don’t think anyone would have seen what really happened, but no matter what some people will see and believe what they want regardless of anything else.
A Little Love for the Ride-Buyers
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It should not have come as a surprise to anyone that Kyffin Simpson was
named to the third and final entry for Chip Ganassi Racing for the 2025 NTT
IndyCar...
1 day ago
Seems like he might be a cool guy?
As Tony would say, "That's why entourage members should stay in the grandstand." Still waiting on my hard card.
Anthony's interview is SOFA KING cool!
Anthony rules bottom line. That was one of the most exciting things I've seen at the Glen haha. Glad you got to explain urself.
What a great piece of journalism, things like that give hope to me that blogs can be useful. This is something none of the other outlets cared to do and a perfect example of how blogging is changing the way news is being distributed. Great job Jeff!
So he's not a douche bag? Hmmm.
"The Cheever Family maybe..."
best zinger of 2007...
http://youtube.com/watch?v=dXm_3obaOcc